Last week we took what has become our annual family vacation to Black Butte Ranch near Sisters, Oregon. This time we started out with our grandchildren while my son and my DIL competed in a 24 hour relay race, running circuitously from Diamond Lake to Bend.
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| This Western Sulfur female is identical to Christina's. |
This adventure might have had a better beginning, but the weather for those first two days was deplorable. Our friend Bob Hillis was simultaneously attempting to watch butterflies in Southern Idaho. He was experiencing the same cold, windy weather and reported that conditions were ideal for watching trees and rocks, but not fragile insects. Meanwhile, we had two high energy ragazzi couped up in the house fighting over board games and watching obnoxiously loud cartoons. Just like David Muir, I can lead with the weather. Its 100 degrees in Boston! Ok. It sucks. Who cares?
By the third day, the weather had improved, James and Tara (Or as Valdar would say, the Parental Units) had found their way to Black Butte and Sandra and I were on our way to the Metolius Preserve, ground zero for Cascade butterflies. This was the first day after the unseasonable storm and the ground was just warming up. The conditions were really pleasant, if a bit cool for butterflies. The best thing was that we were out walking in the moist woods, and it was really quiet.
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| Anna's Blue, Metolius Preserve, June 2025 |
From a butterfly perspective we collected a medium sized yellow butterfly. On photographic examination, (back at the ranch), it looked just like a Christina's Sulfur, which would have been a few hundred miles out of range. We sent our picture to Caitlin LaBar and she replied that it was a female Western Sulfur. Not only is this a fairly common butterfly throughout much of Oregon and Washington, but its picture is on the page preceding Christina's Sulfur in Cait's book, our standard reference. In our defense, the female Western and Christina's Sulfur appear identical to me. The fact that the photo was on an adjoining page was a little embarrassing.
That night we were regaled, over an appropriate beverage, with stories from the race. The highlight involved Wie, who I have known since he was a skinny little Vietnamese second grader. He has grownup to be a big, athletic beast who can beat anybody at any sport you might name. In the early morning hours, as the team approached Bend, Wie ran a twelve mile leg over Mt. Bachelor, in the dark, in the snow! The race committee gave a special medal to the runners who completed this leg, presumably bearing the visage of a Yeti.
And that is how we celebrate the Summer Solstice in the Oregon Cascades.
The next morning, Tara herded the cats to the lodge pool, James worked from home on his computer and Sandra and I headed back to Camp Sherman. The weather was getting progressively warmer and there were more butterflies on the wing.
We saw lots of good stuff, ten species in all, but the highlight was clearly two Anna's Blue Butterflies. These are small blue butterflies, so until you get very close, probably taking a picture for a very good look, you probably don't know what you are looking at. In this location, Silvery Blues were common. Silveries are not especially large, and the blue of the Anna's male is similar to that of the silvery. Hence the need for a good photo.
Anna's Blue butterfly is so uncommon, that when Cait saw our pictures, she wanted to know exactly where we saw it. With this in mind, I'm including more than one picture of the Anna's, one from the field and one from the lab. Cait said this butterfly is found sporadically in small pockets.
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| The Wild Forget-Me-Not Moth in Sandra's hand. |
Our second Anna's was resting on a fern. This is a good year for ferns at the Metolius Preserve. I'm not sure if this is good for butterflies. Anyway, we took his picture and he flew away. The picture we took was blurry, but it shows a lot of orange in the dorsal wing surfaces.
Finally, you see the picture of the ventral surfaces taken under controlled conditions. This, presumably, is the one Cait used for her identification. Something to note: there is a substantial difference in the ventral surfaces between the sexes in this butterfly. This is a male and it matches up with the picture in Pyle and LaBar.
Finally we got back to the car. As we left the parking lot, we got a text from Tara saying there were lots of butterflies around the pool. This accompanied a photo of a substantial black and white moth on her leg.
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| Gnophaela latipensis, Black Butte, June 2025 |
I wouldn't know a forget-me-not if it forgot me without a second thought. However, also according to Wikipedia, this moth doesn't eat forget-me-nots. Rather, while living in a variety of habitats mostly in Oregon, and including Ponderosa Pine forests, it dines on two species of Dog's Tongue, which sounds a bit like one of the pirates from Treasure Island. Dog's tongue is an unassuming weed with blue flowers and long floppy leaves that must have reminded someone of, well, a dog's tongue.
That venerable organization, Pacific Northwest Moths, notes that this moth is a plant specialist and the caterpillars insists upon Hound's Tongue. Obviously they are not pirates. La de da. This must be a good year for canine glossa in the pine forests around the pool at Black Butte.
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| Western Sheep Moth Hemileuca eglanterina, June 2025 |
We have not seen this insect previously over a great many years. It is big enough and it was so common that if it had been present even a disinterested urbanite could not have been unaware of them. So something is going on at the Butte. Perhaps a bumper crop of Dog's Tongue? Climate change? Trump's under-publicized tariff on Fleabane?
Soon enough, the cock crowed and our final day of butterflying was upon us. We made it back to the preserve a little later than before, hitting the Lake Creek Trail around 10;30. This day, as predicted, was hotter. Almost immediately I spied something strange in the sagebrush. Of course, this wasn't sagebrush, but to us non-botanists it might as well be. But not to butterflies...or moths. Hanging from a branch of the brush was an object about three inches in length. It was pink and yellow, shaped like a butterfly wing in profile. And I said to myself, " Why the f... would a child hang his colorful, rubber toy on the sagebrush? (The fact that it was already f...ing hot explains my cursing.)
I called Sandra over and she convinced me to pick it up. The material had some bulk to it, but it wasn't rubber. And as Sandra turned it over she saw a legion of wiggling legs and shrieked, "It's alive!" Well, if you know my girl, you know she didn't shriek. Rather, she sort of propped it up on her wrist for a picture of its face and then she laid it down in the dusty shade so we could get a picture of the wing. I then returned it to the sagebrush, which may or may not be Peck's Penstemon. Who the f... knows?
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| Is the Western Sheep Moth going to eat Sandra in lieu of a sheep? |
Like many animals, a picture takes the place of paragraphs. You can see the incredible mustard colored hair, the feather like antennae and the large colorful wings.
We proceded to retrace our route through the riparian woodland, seeing a Zerene Fritillary fluttering on some wet soil and a Clouded Sulfur hiding among the ferns. But too soon we returned to our vehicle for some AC and water. While we sat there cooling off, I used Google lens to identify the hairy beast. This previously unknown critter was a Western Sheep Moth. Wikipedia says that it is day flying and not uncommon. So why haven't we seen it before? Heaven knows, it is difficult to overlook.
Despite the fact that he is deputized by the State of Hawaii and UH Manoa to save the Kamehameha Butterfly, my mentor, Daniel Rubinoff, is a moth guy. So I wrote to him for some answers. "Is it called a sheep moth because it is so wooly, albeit the wool is a hideous yellow color, or does it actually eat sheep.?"
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| Mustard colored hats sold by SheepMoth.com, Girl sold separately |
Daniel wrote back saying that it was so named because it inhabits mountain meadows where they (shepherds, I suppose) graze sheep. "It's in the book!" he said, meaning Insects of California to which he a co-author. He went on to say that he did his Phd on that genus, Hemileuca.
Of course, the moths eat very little, certainly not sheep. And as far as I know, they don't taste like sheep. But they do have that nice, mustard colored wool. Next time I find one I think I will harvest the fleece and knit myself a cap for use in the Oregon summertime.
jeff
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